Leander Kahney's Blog, page 1531

The latest piece full-on AirPlay sound hardware is fro...

The latest piece full-on AirPlay sound hardware is from the sonic wizards over at Los Angeles-based Audyssey.

Yeah, the Lower East Side Audio Dock Air ($399) looks more like a Lego brick than the outfit's svelte South of Market dock we raved about earlier this year — but the new, six-speaker dock is filled with audio-techno-jargon like "passive bass radiators" and "Smart Speaker technology," which is probably English for "this will blow you away, dude." And of course, don't forget the AirPlay.

The dock is Audyssey's second gadget with the "Lower East Side" name — the first being their LES media speakers — and should ship in November.

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Published on October 19, 2011 19:06

Google Music App for iPhone Launches in the App Store

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Interactive Innovation Solutions has released an iPhone app for Google Music called gMusic. Members of Google's music locker service can stream up to 20,000 tracks from the iPhone.

gMusic looks and feels almost exactly like the native Music app in iOS 5, and it offers a native experience over the web app that Google offers its customers.

gMusic is the only native iOS app that lets you access your Google Music account, which allows you to keep up to 20,000 of your favorite songs in Google Music. Now you can listen to your entire music collection without having to use any space on your iOS device.

gMusic features include:
- Very fast load times. Typically less than 10 seconds until you can load and start
streaming your Music library.
After that the rest of your collection will trickle in.
- Create an Instant Playlist
- Add songs to existing playlists
- Search by Artist, Songs, Albums, or Genres
- Plays in the background so you can use your other apps while still listening to your music
- Stay tuned for other great new features coming soon.

After you verify your Google Music account in-app, gMusic lets you stream music in the background, create playlists on the fly, and sync with your online account's library.

While the app appears to be a little buggy, gMuisc does allow you to store a limited amount of your music collection offline for cached listening. This is a super useful feature for those that don't always have data connectivity, whether it be on a subway or airplane.

You can download gMusic for iPhone in the App Store for $2.

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Published on October 19, 2011 17:02

FX Photo Studio Pro: Level Up Your Photos with Ease [Review]

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Every new Mac comes with iPhoto, which is getting better all the time. Still, it doesn't have all of the features that are made for folks who are really into manipulating their photgraphs. Adobe's Photoshop is often too much for the budding shooter (and cost prohibitive to boot), and image editors like Acorn – while simple to use and well-priced – don't necessarily have the "feel" of iPhoto that many Mac users are used to.

This is where FX Photo Studio Pro by MacPhun ($40 in the Mac App Store) comes in. It has a user interface that is very easy to navigate and takes little to get accustomed to and doesn't break the bank, all while having a set of features that delivers superior results for those who want to level up their photographs.

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Right off the bat, I fell in love with the user interface of FX Photo Studio Pro. I was able to immediately add effects to an image using the scrollable viewer at the bottom of the application window. The variety of effects was astounding for a product at this price point – and the effects are just scratching the surface of what this photo editor has to offer.

By simply dragging an image into FX Photo Studio Pro, the user is presented with a range of options such as FX effects, cropping, rotation tools and slider adjustments. The slider adjustment screen is easier to work with than iPhotos enhancement option; the sliders are larger for one thing. That may not seem like much for some users, but for users that just want to process their images quickly and effortlessly, this little attention to detail is one of the attributes that make FX Photo Studio Pro such a pleasure to use.

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Social sharing is also built in, allowing for users to share their finished photos with friends and family right from within the application. Popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Tumblr are represented here, along with email if you'd rather send your shots directly to people.

One of the only downsides that I found with FX Photo Studio Pro is that it doesn't offer much more than apps that I already have, like Acorn. Acorn is more feature-rich and I've already adapted to its UI. I don't know if those who have already invested in higher end image processing applications would need to add this to their arsenal – it offers nothing new to those users.

Verdict

If you're not happy with what limited image editing options iPhoto offers and are looking to explore new and creative ways to add some sizzle to your photos, then FX Photo Studio Pro is definitely worth a look. Its user interface is among the best of any image processing application I've ever seen and its versatility is incredible for such a low priced piece of software.

Rating:

Right now you can get FX Photo Studio Pro as part of the Mac Photo Effects FamilyPack Bundle on our Deals page. It's only $35 for this app plus Color Splash Studio and InstaeDesk. Plus, the first 500 to purchase this deal will get an additional four extra licenses for both FX Studio Pro and Color Splash Studio to share.

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Published on October 19, 2011 16:55

Weird Focus-Later Digital Camera Goes On Pre-order, But Only Works With Macs For Now

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This is the Lytro, a bizarre and radical new concept in digital photography that lets you snap an image now, and worry about focusing it later.

Pre-orders just opened today, and you can grab one for as little as $399 (I'll take two!). But before you click the order button, make sure you have a Mac – because Lytro doesn't work with Windows computers yet.

How does the Lytro work? The official description sounds like something from the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy:

The light field fully defines how a scene appears. It is the amount of light traveling in every direction through every point in space. Conventional cameras cannot record the light field.

But the Lytro can, right? It sounds like it must be the Infinite Improbability Drive of digital cameras, capturing everything everywhere all at the same time. There's a full explanation of the science behind it on the Lytro site but quite frankly, having read it twice I still don't really understand what's going on.

What I do know is that the image files you get from this thing aren't going to easily import into iPhoto. They're described as "living pictures", not your humble jpg file. They require extra software to edit and view them.

And that's where we find out, tucked away in the details page, that the software supplied with the Lytro is Mac-only for the time being:

Includes a free desktop application for importing, processing and interacting with living pictures from the camera. It is built for Mac OS and requires Mac OS X 10.6 or higher. A Windows application is in development.

Hands up who remembers the days when it was the other way round? When new stuff got released for Windows first, because duh, everyone used Windows – and for Mac much, much later. If at all.

How times have changed.

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Published on October 19, 2011 15:01

Remember the Milk To-Do App Gets Integrated with Siri

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The developers for popular to-do app Remember the Milk have found a way to integrate their app with Siri, Apple's new voice assistant in the iPhone 4S.

Once you get the workaround up and running, Siri uses Remember the Milk to create and sync reminders in iOS 5. You can dictate a reminder to Siri normally, except you'll actually be using Remember the Milk as well.

As a wirelessly-synced, cross-platform service, Remember the Milk can be accessed on a wide variety of devices. Users can also login to the service's website in a browser to access reminders and tasks.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9STCWcKDcYg

While this isn't quite "official app integration" with Siri, it's definitely a testament to how third party developers can tie their platforms with Siri to give more options to the user. In this case, Reminders in iOS 5 already syncs tasks between devices via iCloud, but users have the ability to use Remember the Milk instead.

The developers of Remember the Milk share this tutorial for setting up their service with Siri:

Open Settings on your iPhone 4S Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars Tap Add Account… Tap Other Underneath Calendars, tap Add CalDav Account In the 'Server' field, enter: www.rememberthemilk.com In the 'User Name' and 'Password' fields, enter your Remember The Milk details Tap Next You should be returned to Mail, Contacts, Calendars, with the account added. Scroll to the bottom of the screen, and tap Default List Tap Remember The Milk You're done! Start asking Siri to remind you about tasks. :)

Siri currently integrates with Yelp and Wolfram Alpha already on the iPhone 4S, and many are hoping that Apple will open up Siri API access to third party developers in the future.

(via Mashable)

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Published on October 19, 2011 14:05

New Flashback OS X Trojan is in the Wild, And It Can Kill OS X's Anti-Malware [Scams]

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You may recall the Flashback.A OS X trojan that Apple patched last month. The virus disguised itself as the official Adobe Flash Player installer and connected to an unknown server to secretly download and run unsigned code.

According to F-Secure, the Flashback trojan is back again in a new variant that's capable of disabling Apple's anti-malware tool from auto-updating.

Flashback.C disables Apple's native anti-malware tool, called XProtect, from receiving updates from Apple that help OS X detect and destroy malware. Not only does this particularly nasty behavior keep Apple from detecting the trojan's existence, but it also leaves the floodgates open for other future malware attacks on a compromised system.

The reason that FlashBack exists is currently unknown. All we know is that the trojan connects to an unauthorized host and downloads/runs malicious code without the user's consent.

While we wait for Apple to release an update to combat this new variant of Flashback, it's important for users to only download Flash Player from trusted sources (such as Apple or Adobe). It's never wise to install programs from an unverified source, especially when they require an administrative password to run.

(via MacTrast)

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Published on October 19, 2011 13:38

Aerial Footage Of Steve Jobs' Memorial At Apple HQ [Video]

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CBS Helicopter and Cnet captured some incredible aerial footage of Cupertino HQ's memorial to Steve Jobs, where both Norah Jones and Coldplay performed for an audience of tens of thousands of employees around the world. Look at the size of the family that Steve built.

Check out the video here.

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Published on October 19, 2011 13:21

Apple Turns On iTunes Match in iOS 5

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Apple has promised that iTunes Match will launch for US customers by the end of the month, and now they are starting to roll out preparations for it to users of iOS 5, namely by turning on the iTunes Match setting under the 'Music' settings pane for both developers and us plebs.

Of course, for regular users, this won't mean much: Apple has yet to allow normal users to pay the $24.99 and sign-up for iTunes Match. In fact, iTunes Match isn't even baked into iTunes 10.5, with the functionality shuffled over to the 10.5.1 Beta instead.

So iTunes Match is coming, probably within the next week or so. Of course, whether it is ready for prime time is a very different question, as issues with the service abound for developers. In fact, internally, most of our writers have not been able to get our libraries to dependably sync with iTunes Match. The launch of iCloud might have gone well, but expect a bumpy ride when iTunes Match goes live.

[via RazorianFly]

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Published on October 19, 2011 11:50

Here's What Is Going On At Apple HQ's Steve Jobs Memorial [Live Updating]

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According to reports on Twitter, Apple's Steve Jobs memorial event is well underway, and it's already looking like a touching tribute to a great man by the company he built.

A tweet by Rodger Lizaola says ex-Vice President and Apple board member Al Gore has already arrived.

Meanwhile, Nora Jones is reportedly playing a tribute song in memory of Steve Jobs that Kevin Rochowski says "really sets the right tone." The song she played was Forever Young.

Tyler Stone tweeted: "Wonderful speech by Tim [Cook]. Wonderful speech by Bill Campbell. Wonderful performance by Norah Jones. This really helps bring closure."

We'll be updating this post as we get more.

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Published on October 19, 2011 10:51

Apple Stores Across The Country Closing Shop To Observe Steve Jobs' Death

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Apple Stores around the country are tastefully drawing white curtains across their windows and observing the life of co-founder Steve Jobs streamed live from Apple HQ. We're trying to get insider reports on what will be going on inside, stay tuned.

[image via ohwaititsmango]

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Published on October 19, 2011 10:07